Mastercard Scores Every Transaction in Real Time to Assess the Potential for Fraud

The digital payment ecosystem in India is evolving rapidly. The Government of India has highlighted the importance of digital payments as a part of its larger agenda of financial inclusion. It has set a target of 30 billion digital transactions in the country in FY 19. This is supplemented by over 478 million mobile internet users in the country. Therefore, it is imperative to protect and imbibe safety and security measures for every single digital transaction.

We are living in a connected world and with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), the possibility of fraud has increased manifold. The number of IoT devices in India is expected to increase significantly from roughly 200 million units in 2016 to 2.7 billion units by 2020, according to a NASSCOM report. All these will be connected, many of them payment enabled and potentially vulnerable.

The scale of cyber threats has also grown by leaps and bounds. According to a recent survey in India conducted by Mastercard, 85% of people now accept that data breaches and hacks are the new normal and will likely happen to everyone. Moreover, nearly eight-in-ten (78%) of Indians believe there is not much they can do to protect their personal and financial information from being stolen.

“A significant driver for this trend is our evolution into a world that revolves around apps and many apps have payment rail that supports the underlying transaction in a seamless way – be it retail or cabs or food delivery. As much as these require payments to be smooth, there is also a need to keep them secure to retain customer trust. So, we see this trend that accentuates the need for good cybersecurity protection at multiple levels,” said Karthik Ramanathan, Senior Vice-President, Enterprise Security Solutions, Asia Pacific, Mastercard.

AI Helps in Detecting Fraud:

The company claims that Mastercard scores every transaction in real time to assess the potential for fraud and shares this data with Issuer banks. This is an invaluable input for Issuers to approve or decline a transaction. Launched in 2016, Decision Intelligence is the company’s latest scoring tool based on AI. When you are looking to analyze over 140,000 transactions every minute, analyze behavioural history at a customer level and use a large amount of historical fraud data to arrive at a score, you need the power of AI. The company acquired Brighterion in 2017 and with its help, are building AI into various modules within our fraud assessment ecosystem.

“Another company we acquired in 2017, is a cybersecurity firm called NuData. They are a global leader in behavioural biometrics – a cutting-edge field. For example, if someone was to steal your password or use your phone to login to your bank account, NuData with its AI can identify the abnormal use of the device basis past experience like grip, typing speed, being held in the left or right hand, etc. The suspicious transactions are reported to banks, merchants, or any other relevant stakeholders who can assess the risk in real time and allow or deny the transaction,” said Karthik Ramanathan.

These are just two examples where the company uses AI to inform the stakeholders in real time about a transaction – so that they can make informed decisions.

How does Mastercard Prevent Fraud:

In 2017, about 70 billion transactions around the world were processed through the Mastercard system. To make these transactions safe, Mastercard has invested over U.S.$ 1 billion globally in the last three years to protect the digital payments ecosystem. There is no one single solution that can stop fraud. “So, we recommend and offer several layers of security without hampering the user experience. Our presence across more than 200 markets and the sheer volume of transactions we see has helped Mastercard understand and identify the key fraud trends cropping around the world,” said Karthik.

According to a study by Fortune, more than 80% of Fortune 500 CEOs view technology as extremely important to their company’s future. “Viewed as a vital capability for industries that have rich data, many companies still lack the experience and expertise to extract the intelligence that can improve consumers’ experience. For companies looking to take advantage of the technology today, AI Express offers quick results along with the know-how to move forward with a full-fledged artificial intelligence deployment,” he added.

At one level, the company has several solutions that prevent a fraudulent transaction from entering our system. On top of that, they have several real-time tools that scan a transaction and identify potential fraud. The company claims that they are constantly adding new tools that improve our partners’ capabilities to identify and to stop fraudulent transactions.

DQ Live SlideShow

Pradeep Gupta, CMD, CyberMedia Group welcoming Dr Arvind Gupta, National Head Information Technology, BJP. Dr Gupta was the Chief Guest of the evening

(L-R) Sunil Sharma, VP, Sales, India & Saarc, Cyberoam and Dr Arvind Gupta, National Head IT giving the Dataquest Business Technology Award to Sapient Consulting for the best IT implementation in security, mobility, unified communications, and infrastructure management

Jubilant Lifesciences received the award for best IT implementation in analytics, mobility, cloud, ERP/SCM/CRM

ING Vysya Bank received the award for best IT implementation in mobility and ERP/SCM/CRM, infrastructure management

Escorts received the award for best IT implementation in analytics and security

Amity received the award for best IT implementation in security and unified communications

LV Bank received the award for best IT implementation in unified communications

Biocon received the award for best IT implementation in mobility and unified communications

Happiest Minds received the award for best IT implementation in security and cloud

HCL Infosystems received the award for best IT implementation in cloud and ERP/SCM/CRM

Evalueserve received the award for best IT implementation in security and cloud

Sterlite Technologies received the award for best IT implementation in analytics and cloud

Serco Global received the award for best IT implementation in mobility and cloud

Intellect Design Arena received the award for best IT implementation in cloud and unified communications

Reliance Entertainment received the award for best IT implementation in analytics and cloud

Canon India received the award for best IT implementation in analytics

Persistant Systems received the award for best IT implementation in analytics

ILFS received the award for best IT implementation in infrastructure management

eClerx received the award for best IT implementation in analytics

Sesa Sterlite received the award for best IT implementation in ERP/SCM/CRM

Hero Moto Corp received the award for best IT implementation in ERP?SCM?CRM

KPIT received the award for best IT implementation in unified communications

JK Tyres received the award for best IT implementation in analytics

Idea Cellular received the award for best IT implementation in analytics

Godfrey Philips received the award for best IT implementation in infrastructure management

Aviva Life Insurance Co received the award for best IT implementation in infrastructure management

Hindalco received the award for best IT implementation in analytics

Aircel received the award for best IT implementation in unified communications

Dr Lal Path Labs received the award for best IT implementation in cloud

Gati received the award for best IT implementation in mobility

Perfetti Van Melle received the award for best IT implementation in cloud

Sheela Foam received the award for best IT implementation in mobility

Tata Communication received the award for best IT implementation in ERP/SCM/CRM

NDTV received the award for best IT implementation in analytics

Hindustan Power received the award for best IT implementation in mobility